


Take This Life

by kuiske



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Mild Angst, Sexual Content, Violence, dworin week on tumblr, mentions of in universe racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuiske/pseuds/kuiske
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Deeper and little to the left that scratch would’ve killed you.” Dwalin said as-a-matter-of-factly.</i>
</p><p> <i>“Come here,” Thorin said quietly.</i></p><p>(Dworin week day 6 - Intimacy)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take This Life

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I'm not making profit with this. All rights belong to their respective owners.

Dwalin sighed and tried to force the adrenaline to leave his body by staring at the oilskin roof of a tent he shared with Thorin. They were camped out in a small copse of trees in the outskirts of some nameless Mannish village, whose inhabitants’ goodwill to dwarves stretched just far enough to allow them to work there. The dwarves had been told in no uncertain terms that they weren’t wanted within the walls after sundown. There were only five of them in total; himself and Thorin as blacksmiths; two Broadbeams, toymaker Bofur and peddler Jarpur; and an old Ironfist leatherworker, Dverj, son of Dwelja. He was an exile of Erebor despite his clan, he’d come there as a young dwarf, and when it fell he’d stuck with the exiles instead of returning to the Orocarni mountains. _Why_ was a matter of some gossip, and Dverj tended to amuse himself by dropping hints that seemed to favour the most outlandish of those rumours. Dwalin rather liked him. There would have been some safety in travelling with more people, but other races got progressively more suspicious and openly hostile the more dwarves came to their village in one go. 

Today hadn’t been a good day. They’d been set on by bandits, a minor scuffle that had ended up very badly for the unfortunate bandits and earned only minor injuries for themselves. It would've’ been hardly worth mentioning, if it weren’t for the fact that Thorin had taken the worst wound, and all thanks to Dwalin making a mistake, too; one would’ve only been expected from a green stripling new to his axes. He’d crushed a bandit’s leg and taken his arm clean off the shoulder and moved in for the next one, but this one had shown persistence rare for Men and had taken a stab at Thorin with a dagger held in his remaining hand. Thorin’s travelling armour had deflected the worst of it, but the blade had bit into his lower back nevertheless. The injury itself wasn’t all that serious, it had been cleaned, stitched and bandaged and hadn’t been enough to have Thorin even consider sitting out a day’s work in the forge (though he had stuck to the lighter tasks. Making needles and buckles wasn’t exactly hard labour.) It was the blade missing Thorin’s kidney by half an inch that made Dwalin’s blood run cold.

Any number of people they’d met through the years had mistaken Dwalin for a glorified bodyguard simply because he spent so much time standing behind his King. Idiots, the lot of them. Dwalin was one of the few who Thorin trusted enough to allow him out of his line of vision at all times (and for fuck’s sake, he _knew better_ than to allow live enemies behind Thorin’s back). One of Thorin’s personal quirks was that he generally avoided prolonged eye-contact with the people he felt comfortable with. Dwalin supposed it was only natural, seeing as Thorin’s preferred form of intimidation was staring people down and he disliked taking his eyes off possible threats. There were really only a handful of people who understood it was a sign of some trust when Thorin stopped looking directly at them and started looking slightly past them. 

He could hear Thorin making some deliberate noise before opening the oilskin flaps and crawling inside. He’d taken the first watch for the sake of his injury so that he’d get uninterrupted sleep for the most of the night and had apparently guessed that Dwalin would still be awake, habitually checking the straps of his armour he knew to be in place. They would sleep fully dressed, not for warmth, since the early autumn nights were still warm, but to be ready in case of an attack at night. Even armour as well-made as theirs was rather uncomfortable to sleep in, but as it were, they’d have been far more uncomfortable trying to sleep without it. Thorin lowered himself to his bedroll with a grimace and turned to lie on his left side so he was facing Dwalin. He didn’t bother trying to come up with words to make him feel better, he simply reached out to pull Dwalin closer and pressed their foreheads together.

They stayed like that for a long while. Just when Dwalin suspected Thorin might have fallen asleep he shifted a little and brushed his lips against Dwalin’s. Thorin pulled back a little to look at him reassuringly wearing a soft smile and a softer look in his eyes, then he kissed him again and again and again, slow and gentle caresses with lips and tongue. There was little skin available for touching; Dwalin had his hand in Thorin’s hair and Thorin was stroking Dwalin’s beard and cheek alike. It was a hiss of pain that broke their kiss when Thorin shifted to a position the wound in his back objected to.

“Thorin?” Dwalin hated how nervous he sounded, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I’m fine,” Thorin replied and pushed himself to a sitting position. “It’s little more than a scratch, I’ll have to avoid pulling the stitches is all.”

“Deeper and little to the left that scratch would’ve killed you.” Dwalin said as-a-matter-of-factly.

Thorin looked at him oddly. Dwalin wasn’t generally one to repeat the obvious or worry over what-ifs, but today had shaken him worse than he liked to admit. He thought he’d masked it from his voice, but then, Thorin spent so much of his time worrying it stood to reason he’d recognize it in others and see right through Dwalin trying to hide his lingering fear.

“Come here,” Thorin said quietly.

Dwalin rose from the bedroll to sit next to him. The tent’s roof was barely high enough from them to sit without brushing their head’s against it. Thorin reached out to touch the scar running across Dwalin’s face. 

“Little to the left and you’d have lost the eye. Little deeper and I’d have had to burn you too.” 

“That was on the battlefield, and not because of the incompetence of someone who was supposed to watch my back,” Dwalin said bluntly.

“You’re hardly incompetent, and what am I?” Thorin scoffed. “Some prince from a Mannish tale that can’t even get dressed without three servants showing him how? Or doing it for him?” 

For all that Thorin had a habit of beating himself up, he didn’t allow others to do the same. Dwalin might have accused him of lying to make him feel better if he didn’t know Thorin was brutally honest at all times, far past the point where it could be considered a social impediment among people whose idea of politeness involved telling such blatant lies as _it’s a pleasure to meet you_. As it were, _I’m fine_ was the only lie Thorin had ever knowingly told him.

“You trusted me.”

“Unnecessary past tense. I trust you.” Thorin took Dwalin by the wrists and deliberately led one hand to the back of his head, and then the other to cradle his chin barely covered in the short mourning beard. 

The gesture was not lost on Dwalin. With one hand behind Thorin’s head and another beneath his jaw Dwalin stood in position to break Thorin’s neck with a single swift motion he was very familiar with. There was nothing Thorin would be able to do about it either, which he’d known perfectly well when he guided Dwalin to hold him as if ready to kill. The gesture rang back to their binding ceremony, when they’d both in turn pressed a knife held by the other on their own throat. _Take this life, it’s yours_. As he had then, Thorin rested his life in Dwalin’s hands with relaxed ease and a small smile. 

Something akin to a sob escaped Dwalin’s throat. He let his hands fall down to Thorin’s shoulders. The next kiss lacked all the languid quality of the previous ones. Dwalin swallowed Thorin’s groan as he licked his way into his mouth with fervour tinged with desperation. His hands ventured lower still, he fumbled with Thorin’s trousers trying to loosen the lacings when all he wanted to do was to tear the damn things off. Thorin’s fingers were nimbler, or maybe his hands just shook less. His hand closed around Dwalin’s rapidly hardening cock and pulled it free from his pants. Dwalin moaned as if it were his first time and snapped the leather cord he’d failed to untie.

*

Those who say it’s impossible to have sex sitting up in a tent mostly clothed and armoured have never tried hard enough. There was very little access to bare skin, true, but there was enough. There were other problems, though.

“Would kill to have you inside me right now,” Dwalin gasped into Thorin’s mouth. _Alive. All hot and hard and **alive**_. He squeezed his shaft a little for emphasis.

“We haven’t got any oil,” Thorin panted, his thumb running a maddening circle over the piercing at the tip of Dwalin’s cock over and over again.

“You should have me without. Serve me right, be fucked raw and bloody.”

Thorin bit his lip, hard.

“Shut up,” he growled. “Not gonna hurt you just cause I shed a little blood today.”

Dwalin laughed. “ _So many_ dagger jokes you could’ve just made…”

Dwalin barely had time to protest Thorin letting go of his cock and pushing Dwalin’s hands off as well, before he slammed his palms to his chest. He fell on his back and Thorin pinned his shoulders to the ground, rolling his hips slowly against Dwalin’s before lifting himself higher so their erections barely brushed together. The dark curls of Thorin’s hair fell past his face to frame a thoroughly evil grin, and if his wound bothered him it didn’t show.

“Fucking. _Tease_ ,” Dwalin snarled, bucking his hips upwards in futile search for some friction. “Get _on_ with it.”

Thorin laughed at him, but had mercy, or maybe he lost his patience as well. He rutted his cock against Dwalin’s, who barely waited long enough to push a hand between them and wrap it around them both. The deep moan escaping Thorin’s throat sounded almost like a purr and he abandoned all of his previous restraint as he nuzzled against Dwalin’s neck trying to get past his beard and fucked hard into his hand, against his cock. 

Dwalin nearly came on the spot when he felt Thorin’s tongue and teeth on his throat. Thorin _knew_ what this did to him. Dwalin had fucked other people for fun and stress-relief, but there was exactly one person who’d ever been allowed anywhere near his jugular. He felt Thorin catch a bit of skin between his teeth right over his pulse point. Dwalin groaned in desperation and tilted his chin upwards, wordlessly begging for him to _do that again_. He felt Thorin’s breathless huff of laughter, before his teeth closed around Dwalin’s windpipe, right under his chin. Thorin twisted his head and yanked it back slightly as if to tear his throat out like a wolf, and Dwalin’s world flashed white. He could feel Thorin’s teeth around his hoarse shout as he spilled over them both. 

Thorin wasn’t far behind him, he came with last few erratic thrusts and collapsed bonelessly against Dwalin’s chest. For a while they’d simply lie there catching their breath. Then Thorin rolled off Dwalin with a groan that turned to startled hiss off pain when his injured back hit the ground. 

“Dolt,” Dwalin grumbled. He cleaned them both with a rag he’d fished out of his pocket before he helped Thorin turn on his stomach. New lacings for his trousers would have to wait until morning. “Your stitches all okay?”

“Feel like it,” Thorin grimaced. “You should get some sleep, you still have to get up for your watch tonight.”

“I’ve got the last one, it’s not so bad,” Dwalin settled down by Thorin’s side and pressed a drowsy kiss on his hair.

“I’m sorry,” Dwalin’s voice was barely above a whisper. “You know that, right?” He felt like he needed to say it out loud.

“I know,” Thorin’s hand fumbled blindly for Dwalin’s.

Dwalin laced their fingers together, shifted a bit closer and didn’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> I firmly headcanon that when they are among their own, dwarves are roughly as shy about having sex as they are about nudity in general. Which is to say, not at all.


End file.
